Stroke And Heart Attack: Poor Sleep Increases Risk Of Both

Between work, hobbies and paying bills, it can be devastatingly difficult to get in the necessary recommended amount of sleep. Research shows that adults need anywhere from seven to nine hours of sleep a night to properly function during the day.

Findings presented at EuroHeartCare, the official annual meeting of the Council on Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions of the European Society of Cardiology, reveal that not getting enough sleep can double the risk of heart attack and quadruple the risk of stroke.

"Sleep is not a trivial issue," researcher Valery Gafarov, said in a news release. "Poor sleep should be considered a modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease along with smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet. Guidelines should add sleep as a risk factor to recommendations for preventing cardiovascular disease."

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from over 650 men between the ages of 25 and 64 years with no history of heart attack, stroke or diabetes in Novosibirsk, Russia. They assessed sleep quality when the study began in 1994 using the Jenkins Sleep scale, which rated the sleep disorder based on very bad, bad or poor ratings, with cases of myocardial infarction and stroke recorded over a 14 year period.

Findings revealed that up to two-thirds of the participants who had a heart attack also had a sleeping disorder. Furthermore, researchers found that men with a sleeping disorder were also at risk of myocardial infarction that was up to 2 to 2.6 times higher and a stroke risk that was 1.5 to 4 times higher than those without a sleeping disorder between five and 14 years to follow up.

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